Consciousness Hacking 101

13. 04. 2016 Written byGareth Gwyn and Chris Catterton

What if we aimed our scientific and technological efforts toward researching and catalyzing peace, compassion, and unconditional love on a global scale? Our community resides at the intersection of many different fields, from ancient wisdom traditions, to biofeedback and wearable technology, to video games and interactive art.

This is a totally new space and it’s growing fast, with lots of different pathways emerging. Navigating it can be a little overwhelming. That’s why we’ve asked our friends in the community to send us their favorites and whittled it down to create a great introduction. So come, take a journey with us, and let’s explore the wonderful world of Consciousness Hacking!

SEE WHAT’S OUT THERE

Biosensors

Part of the vision behind Consciousness Hacking is the use of wearables and real-time biodata to provide interactive feedback to help people learn how to change their state of mind. The main ones in the market today are sensors for brainwaves, heart rate, and breath.

Thousands of people around the world are using Spire to track their breath and infer emotional states. This technology helps users reconnect with their body, be more productive at work, and sleep better at night.

Another innovative technology comes from HeartMath, which that teaches you to regulate your heartbeat and find peace. Muse, the Brain Sensing Headband, can even help you learn to meditate by pointing out when you’re focused and when you’re distracted.

Art Installations & Projects

Art installations are becoming more and more interactive with the help of technology and biosensors. Some art projects are designed so that they’ll never be experienced the same way twice.

For example, the Mutual Wave Machine, is an enclosed and intimate capsule for two which creates an audiovisual environment that reflects shared brain activity. In addition, visitors can directly experience and manipulate their internal efforts to approach each other, or distance themselves from each other. During the experience, greater brainwave synchronization is reflected in greater vividness and more coherent and recognizable audiovisual patterns, while lack of synchronization strays towards dark audio-visual chaos: a faint ringing in the ears and static in the retinas.

The Mutual Wave Machine is an unprecedented emergence demonstrating how art, technology, and interactivity are converging in new ways.

Open BCI – open-source hardware and software for building EEG-based Brain-Computer Interfaces

Coming Soon

Our field is technology’s wild west. Silicon Valley is already beginning to switch its focus from performance enhancement to wellbeing. Consciousness Hacking is becoming more mainstream and there are lots of great products in development right now.

One of our favorites is SoundSelf, which is a new breed of video game designed for virtual reality. A traditional video game transports the user into a virtual world, to role play as a character navigating an environment. You’re the racecar on the track, you’re Mario fighting Bowser. Instead, SoundSelf extends your conception of self into virtual reality: it creates your entire experience based on the sound of your voice, so you are what you see, you are what you hear. It’s a nondual, psychedelic experience facilitated by a videogame.